The Skinners' School

If your son is academic but you do not want him pinned down to one mould, Skinners' tends to reassure on the first visit. Parents often tell the Good Schools Guide they are surprised by how much music and drama are valued here, and that there is no one type of boy who gets involved. Rugby is taken seriously, but it sits beside the arts rather than crowding them out. This is a boys' grammar in Royal Tunbridge Wells, around eleven hundred pupils strong, with a sizeable sixth form that includes girls.

The school has a quiet sense of its own history. It opened in 1887, founded by the Worshipful Company of Skinners, one of the old City of London livery companies, beginning with fifty-three boys, some of whom walked several miles each way to reach class. It has stayed close to those roots while growing, and the aim it sets itself is academic strength alongside genuine independence as a learner, with a real belief in learning outside the classroom.

Pastoral care draws warm comment too. Counselling is not only offered but treated as normal, and mental health is taken seriously rather than brushed past. The head is Edward Wesson. Skinners' suits a boy who is ready to be stretched but who also wants room to find his own thing, whether that turns out to be on the pitch, the stage or in the practice room, and who will settle quickly into a school that prizes kindness as much as results.